Really Simple Vegan Lip Scrub

My lips have taken a real beating over the last week. The British weather really is designed to confuse and we get a reputation for always talking about it, but if you had weather that changed so frequently an so massively, you would too!!

Only a fortnight ago I was freezing, reaching for my onesie pyjamas and thermal socks, and then right now, it's hot and humid. I'm sitting with a fan pointed at me wearing not very much and still feeling warm, so it isn't surprising really that my skin is unhappy at all, but I was surprised to have cracked, dry bleeding lips in this weather- that's something that normally happens in the biting cold for me. I assume it's because of all the air conditioning and fans recirculating air. I have been applying Blistex religiously to heal my lips, but I though perhaps they could do with a good scrub!

I've never scrubbed my lips before actually, but I thought I'd search Google and find a recipe, and most of them contain honey, which I hate, and isn't vegan friendly. I'm not a vegan, but I appreciate how hard it is for vegans, especially as my best friend turned to veganism only a few years ago. I also spotted recipes with almond oil in and I am VERY allergic to almonds so that's out.. SO I decided to make my own containing:

Brown Sugar
Bicarbonate of Soda
Olive Oil
Vanilla Essence

I can't tell you ratios or amounts as I'm crap at that. I'm the kind of chef that does things by eye mostly! Just a dash of vanilla, to flavour and scent it all, teeny bloop of olive oil to moisturise, then a combination of the two dry scrubby things in enough to make a paste (more sugar than bicarb will make it less harsh)

Mix it all up in no particular order. I used a teeny wooden spoon and mixed it in a little tupperware tub that I was going to store it in anyway, but you could transfer it to a jar.

I've now put mine in the fridge as I'm sure it will be even nicer when it's ice cold (assuming I can get it out of the tub!

Scrub that on your lips with a finger or toothbrush in a circular motion, then rinse off with warm water and moisturise with with olive oil or a lip balm of choice (I've put the Blistex on again so it can heal any remaining cracks)

Let me know if you give it a go!

Eurovision 2012

This year's logo

Today here in Europe, it is Eurovision 2012! Hosted this year in Baku, Azerbaijan, the competition is on RIGHT NOW. The UK entry is, in my opinion, pretty awful. Engelbert Humperdinck? REALLY? Oh well. Anyway, for those who don't know, every year there is a contest held across Europe, where each country enters a musical act, and every country votes on the other acts and allocated points from 1 to 12 to their favourites, and the winning country hosts next year (Azerbaijan win last year). See here for full details about Eurovision.





Anyway I wanted to do a Eurovision themed Face of the Day, and instead of going down the patriotic route, I decided to take inspiration from the logo. I thought there would be enough patriotism to come in the UK this year with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics to come!!

So I took a rather literal translation of the logo really (picture up at the top)

It's all Sugarpill Burning Heart palette. Even my lips. I used a Nivea lip gloss and mixed with the shadows! It's all Buttercupcake, Flamepoint and Love + and that's it aside from Urban Decay Primer Potion, MAC Select Foundation and an LA Colors face powder.


I was most annoyed that my brows look brown/auburn. I packed them full of Flamepoint!


What do you think? Sorry the photos aren't that great but the sun had gone down- I couldn't get into my studio to do this until the sun was down as it gets really hot in there at the moment. Enjoy Eurovision and good luck to Engelbert and the United Kingdom! (Please don't let Jedward win.. please!)

Adventures in Eyebrows THE RETURN!

Hello my lovely fair friends! Sorry I've been lax, I know I apologise a lot, but my health has been a little rough lately. I decided to cheer myself up today by playing with make-up!

Big pouty lips!

I got my Burning Heart palette from Sugarpill last week. Frustratingly, just before the new Heartbreaker palette came out which is gorgeous! When I ordered, however, there was no inkling of them releasing the new shinies, but Royal Mail f***ed up and lost my parcel, and after waiting the six weeks, Sugarpill were really sweet and not only reshipped my order, but they changed my order from Supreme Lashes to Shady Lane Lashes because I'd originally wanted the Shady Lane ones but they were out of stock.. so ultimately I got what I wanted, I just had to wait 7 weeks for it! The second order arrived so quickly though! Royal Mail were a bit rubbish again and left my parcel behind a plant pot in my front garden, and it was only down to sheer luck that my husband found it!

On the left there is the incredibly quick look I did with the Burning Heart palette, MAC Dame blush and MAC Quick Sizzle lipstick.

By the way, I'm aware I look very miserable in all the photos, pretty much! There's one smiley one at the end...

Sorry about the wet hair... it's a warm day!

Anyway! Today I continued my Adventures In Eyebrows! I know. You can barely contain your excitement can you? With my Sugarpill order I got a free sample of Magentrix loose eyeshadow. This wasn't high on my wishlist before, but when I used it mixed with water to draw on brows, it looks quite good when you have pink hair! (Even if it does need bleaching at the roots and redying....)


Products used for this look: 

MAC Lucky Jade Shadestick over the inner corner of the eye and over the upper part of the lid with MAC Bitter and MAC Swimming eye-shadows over it.

MAC Sea Me Shadestick on the lower part of the middle of the lid with MAC Electric Eel eyeshadow over that.

Out corners of the eye have Poison Plum by Sugarpill, and I then used Poison Plum wet to line under my eyes.

To highlight I used MAC Lemon Chiffon Shadestick with Sugarpill Tiara over that.

Finally that yummy Sugarpill Magentrix sample, I used wet (just with water) to line under the Poison Plum line and did the brows.

I love the Shady Lane lashes!

Lashes are Shady Lane from Sugarpill. They are just as beautiful as I dreamed they would be! Lengen....dary..

Oooh I look possessed! It's not a photogenic day today...

I used MAC Azalea Blossom blush ombre on my cheeks, and highlighted with MAC Naked pigment

See? I promised a smile in here at the end!

Lips are MAC New York Apple and I tapped some of that Sugarpill Magentrix sample into them which pulls it all together I think.

Sorry I haven't done my hair in any of the photos. It's a ridiculously warm day today here in the UK so I decided to just wash my hair and leave it to dry on it's own. The idea of using a hair drier or straighteners today was not appealing to me at all! Hopefully I'm going to re-dye my hair soon as well and get rid of those pesky roots.

What do you guys think then? I am in love with the intensity, pigmentation and formula of all the Sugarpill shadows. I practically drooled all over the keyboard when I first saw the Heart Breaker palette too! I will have to start counting my pennies for that!

The Orange Challenge

 Apologies for a lack of posts recently. I've not been very well. I'm still not very good, but I'll try and churn something out for you lot anyway! Sorry if it's a bit of a disjointed blog post, but I'm trying!

Today I'm showing you what happens when you decide to give yourself a real challenge. Pick the colour you think looks the worst on you, then do an entire make-up look based around that colour!

The original idea I had worked on paper on the face-chart and I was thinking of couture and catwalks, and those models that look almost alien. A very pale white face, no eyebrows, no mascara, just orange as a liner above the eyes and orange lips. nothing else. Ideally I'd have an orange wig to go with this, but I don't have one....

My friends on Facebook all agreed this was weird and no, orange doesn't suit me....

I never know when to leave things alone anyway, so after I'd taken the browless photos, I'd already carried on playing around, filled in my brows with an orange, lined my eye with black liquid liner on the bottom, added mascara and then false lashes. Oh and I covered my lids with Sugarpill's loose eyeshadow in Tiara for some shimmer and more wearability.


I still don't suit orange, but it's a little more wearable. Sort of. I'm not rushing out to do anything orange again, but it was fun to challenge myself to do something that went against my normal purples and blues!

To make my orange liner, I put a liner of MAC Chrome Yellow eyeshadow on first, then mixed MAC Neo-Orange pigment with MAC Basic Red pigment and some water, and put that on over the yellow.

I'm fairly sure the Neo-Orange and Basic Red aren't eye safe, so I don't recommend that anyone else does this with those pigments, but I'm a rebel and washed it off pretty quickly.

In fact this agrees with me that no, they are NOT eye safe so do not copy me!

My lip colour was made using a Bobbypin lipgloss mixed with Neo-Orange pigment (again) which is actually lip safe, yay! Then I patted some Crystalled Yellow glitter into it, which I'm fairly sure is lip safe too, but I can't guarantee (if you're not sure, don't try- I recommend doing research yourself)

Eyebrows are also coloured with Chrome Yellow eyeshadow, and the Neo-Orange & Basic Red mix.

Disclosure policy for the Fair Fae

I've been meaning to write one of these for awhile now!




This policy is valid from 03 May 2012


This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does not accept any form of cash advertising, sponsorship, or paid topic insertions. However, we will and do accept and keep free products, services, and other forms of compensation from companies and organizations.


The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog.


The owner(s) of this blog is not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog owners. If we claim or appear to be experts on a certain topic or product or service area, we will only endorse products or services that we believe, based on our expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.



When I say we accept free products and services, none have been offered as such yet but if offered, I would accept, but I would post an honest opinion and review of the products or services supplied to me. If products or services reviewed or discussed here were not purchased with money and sent to me by a company, I would ALWAYS disclose that in the post so you can take into consideration any unintentional bias that may be in the post.


I've put a copy of this at the bottom of the blog for future reference.


The "I <3 Free Stuff" image here is of course a little tongue in cheek before you yell at me!!


Thanks for reading!

Opia eyeshadow (Primark)

Hello my little faeries! Today I have a review for you of an eyeshadow I received in a swap on Makeupalley. I'm reviewing it because it's from a brand I'd never heard of before called Opia from Primark which is a bargainous, cheap store here in the UK and Ireland where you can buy clothes, shoes,  jewellery and accesories, homewares and, apparently make-up too for very low prices (I sound like an advert). 

I'd never thought to look there for make-up, and I'm not sure I'd have bought this myself as it doesn't actually have an ingredients list on the jar, though there is a chance it came in a box or some sort of outer packaging with the ingredients, I can't find it anywhere on the web (if you do know the ingredients, please let me know). It's difficult to search for as it has no name or shade number or anything! I can only identify it by "opia" on the lid!

I haven't put this on my eyes yet, only swatched it on my arm, but that's because I have sensitive skin and a lot of allergies and the like, and I'm not keen on sticking an unknown brand on my face. To start, here's a photo to show you the size of the jar. That's an old style MAC pigment jar, and a MAC Fluidline jar to compare it to for size, I hoped most of you would be able to relate to these. It's a reasonable size for a loose eyeshadow, but is tiny compared to the jars from somewhere like Sugarpill, for example.

Now here's the swatches... (enormous photos so you can see all the detail)

Without Flash

With Flash

It's a sort of graphite base colour when applied, with fine holographic particles leaning toward the bluer side of the spectrum. As you can see, it looks best when applied wet (I just used water, nothing else). The primer I used here was Urban Decay Primer Potion in Sin (I used Sin rather than the Original so I could see where I'd applied it on my arm!!). When applied on it's own it was a bit uninspiring... I wasn't wholly impressed. Wet it's actually quite pretty, but I still don't feel it has that oomph I'd like to see. It reminds me a little of Fyrinnae Biker Chic, but watered down a ton, and with nowhere near as much complexity.

I didn't leave it on a long time for a wear test as I didn't know what the ingredients were, as I explained earlier, but I can tell you that it the dry swatch came off easily with make-up remover, the bit over UD PP required a little more scrubbing, but oddly the wet swatch stuck the most and stained a little. I suppose that's because it managed to pack in more product. I didn't try it wet over primer, that would probably have been useful.You may be able to see  in the photos that there was a fair amount of fallout from the swatches, so I imagine it might end up travelling down your face throughout the day. I can't say how much it would crease without a proper test on my eyes, but I'm still not comfortable to do that with something I don't know enough about.

I'm not really sure what I think of this as I'm still hesitant to actually use it on my face, but for a cheap product it does seem to have strong pigmentation, and it is quite pretty. I just don't think it measures up when compared to other similar shades I've tried from other brands, but that may not be a fair comparison, I don't know. I wonder if it's a poor man's Stella but I don't own that so I can't compare, but from swatches I've seen, I'd guess the Opia one has more or a dark grey than a black base compared to Sugarpill's Stella. If you're strapped for cash, I'd say this is a good thing to go for (sorry I can't give you an exact price as I didn't purchase it myself, but knowing Primark, it won't break the bank!) but personally, I'd save up my pennies and buy a different brand with more complexity and depth.

What do you think?